


Long Way To Happy

by orphan_account



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q - Freeform, Angst, Clearly not, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Is anyone ever really prepared for torture?, M/M, Or the aftermath?, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 04:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anon requested vulnerable!Bond, Q taking care of him for once. I guess I kind of went overboard with tortured!Bond…sorry. IDK. I tried a lighter version of this and it didn’t work (silly just doesn’t work for me EVER). Hope it’s okay.</p><p>Trigger warning for torture/recovery. Nothing graphic, the only thing really discussed in depth is psychological torture.</p><p>Lyrics are “Long Way To Happy” by P!nk. (Not many lyrics used. Not a songfic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Way To Happy

M can’t begin to fathom how Bond wound up with Q; the combination of the suave, confident older agent and the admittedly geeky twenty-five-year-old Quartermaster is something that’s beyond her. But she understands enough to know that when something happens to one, the other has the right to know.

When Q gets the news - on the phone at his home, direct from M - he just nods, asks when he can see James, and hangs up the phone. He will never let anyone, not even James, know how long or how hard he cries that evening, curled in a ball on the sofa in his apartment, too angry and too scared to think or move. 

Being subjected to torture, M had said, is just part of the job description for double-oh agents. What Q realizes then is that handling the aftermath of said torture is part of the job description for anyone who gets close to one of them.

They’re keeping 007 under observation in the medical branch, and it’s in one of those cold, over-sanitized rooms that Q first sees him. The young Quartermaster has been briefed over and over again on what to say, what not to say. No amount of briefing, however, could prepare him for the look in James’s eyes when the door opens. Haunted. Broken. Shattered inside. 

“Q,” he murmurs, not getting up from where he’s sitting on his bed.

Q closes the door behind him and stands there for a moment. He’s not sure how he should act; he feels so unprepared. How could either of them have been prepared for this, really? This is far outside of normal human affairs. Torture is decidedly subhuman. No one should ever have to deal with it or its aftermath. But in their line of work…

“Can I sit down?”

James nods, and Q settles his slight frame on the bed, a careful distance away. The older agent is fiddling with a loose string on his shirt, not looking at him. Q can see the new scars on James’s face, on his arms, on his chest. He doesn’t want to even begin to try to figure out what each mark is from. He’s not sure he wants to know. 

Ever. 

There is a long silence, and Q feels his chest tighten. He’s afraid to even breathe.

“I’ve been through this before,” James says softly. “Torture is nothing new. But this was different.”

Q sneaks a glance at him, but James’s face is unreadable. “How so?”

“They said…they told me they had you in the cell next to mine. Told me what they were doing to you. Someone was screaming.” James closes his eyes and takes a slow breath. “He sounded like you. Q, I believed it.”

“Oh, God…” Q reaches out as if to touch him, then thinks better of it. “James, I’ve been here the whole time. I’m okay. Please, believe me.”

“It was…they made it so real. I was so sure of it, Q.” James runs his hands over his face, and he looks somehow smaller, weaker, world-weary. “I didn’t even really care what they did to me. But hearing you…that killed me.” He glances up, and for the first time, their eyes meet. “I can take a lot. There’s not a lot that I haven’t been through. But…the things they said they were doing…the sounds…” His eyes prickle with hot tears. “Fuck.”

James’s body language changes; he closes himself away from Q, from the world, hiding his face. At that point Q decides to entirely abandon the briefings and the rules, and he pulls the agent into his arms, holding him as tight and as close as he can. James melts into him, shaking with silent sobs.

“I’m okay,” Q repeats, over and over again. “I’m okay. Nobody laid a finger on me, James. I know, I know, it was so real. But it wasn’t. I’m really okay.”

James wraps his arm around Q’s slim body and holds him, and he’s not entirely sure he’ll ever be able to let go.

“I couldn’t stand to lose you,” he says softly. “I couldn’t take that. Not that. I couldn’t…I don’t think I’d make it through.”

“You’re not gonna lose me. I promise you, even if there was a threat to my safety, M would have me locked up in - in some secret bomb shelter.” He can’t help chuckling, partly because it’s absurd and partly because, knowing M, it is also entirely plausible. “I promise I’ll be safe.”

“Don’t disappear on me,” James says.

Q frowns. “What?”

“I’ve lost too many people.” James leans his head on Q’s shoulder. “I should be used to it, but instead, all those names have just added up in my mind. I can still remember the faces, the voices. I remember their quirks and their gestures. Everyone I’ve ever lost…they’re not gone. I still think of them.” He pauses. “It’s too many names, Q. Too many faces. I can’t add you to that list.”

Q feels his heart clench tight, and he bites his lip. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and they both know that it’s a promise - a foolish one, at that. They know that there’s no way anyone, let alone an MI6 employee, can promise not to die, not to disappear. 

The Quartermaster is determined to keep this promise, though.

“James…are you going to be okay?”

James nods, pulling Q closer. “I just need to see that you’re really okay. It’ll take time. Torture, it’s meant to reprogram the mind. Most of the time I can shrug it off. But this was different.” He sighs softly. “I really believed it. And the things they said they were doing!…I could see it all in my mind. It was so real.”

“No. No, James,” Q says, his voice low and steady. “It wasn’t real. This - you, me, right now - this is real. Look at me.” The older agent doesn’t move, so Q lifts his chin until their eyes meet. “I’m right here. Stay in the moment. I’m here, and I’m fine.”

James reaches up with one shaking hand to touch Q’s face, tracing his high cheekbones, fingers brushing his hair, touching his glasses. “You’re more beautiful than I remembered.”

Q blushes and ducks his head. “Um. Thanks.”

For the first time, James smiles - a real, honest smile. “All this mess, and I can still make you blush.”

“Yeah, yeah, just keep gloating over that.”

“I think I will.” James straightens up, pulls Q flush against him, and leans down to kiss him deeply. And this time it’s the Quartermaster who melts, his muscles going slack as James tongues his mouth. Somehow Q’s hand finds its way up to James’s neck, his thumb rubbing the sensitive spot behind his ear. The older agent lets out a little gasp and pulls away.

“You’re still blushing,” James says.

“Oh, fuck you.”

James chuckles. “Now that’s my Q.” He leans in and pecks him once more on the lips.

Q hesitates before speaking softly. “We’ll be okay, right?” 

James considers this, turning the very weighted question over in his mind, absently rubbing circles over Q’s back while he thinks.

“Yes,” he says finally. And then, again, more decisively: “Yes.” He glances over at Q, sharp blue eyes meeting hazel ones. “We’ll be okay. Now let’s see if they’ll let me out of here.”

“They won’t approve it,” Q comments as they head out the door.

“Since when have I ever waited for anyone’s approval?” James retorts with a smirk.

Q grins and shoves him very lightly. “Now that’s my 007.”

As they walk down the hall, hands loosely linked together, Q thinks ahead. He knows that this is going to be a long road, that while today is progress, James has a long, long way to go before he’ll ever be normal again. If he’s ever really normal again. But Q intends to see it through. When he said he wouldn’t disappear, he meant it. He has no idea how he’ll manage that, but he will. Somehow.

Long way to happy, he thinks, the lyrics of a song coming back to him. It’s a long, long way to happy…

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I got this quite accurate; my only personal experience with psychological trauma is having been raped, and this is rather different. Also, sorry for the song lyric title...I can't name things worth shit so I tend to lean very hard on my iTunes for that.


End file.
